Paroikos

On the map below you will be able to find marked all the places I talk about in this entry.

On Monday the 21^st of November, Pastor Deepak and I flew to Port Blair in the Andaman Islands to visit our BELC pastors and congregations over there. The Andaman Islands reside almost all the way across the Bay of Bengal, nearer to Malaysia than to India, but are nevertheless part of India. Here Pastor Deepak has spent a lot of time training men and evangelizing since 1998. For a while he lived here, but currently flies over from Chennai four times a year for two weeks each time.

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The final CLCI district we visited last week was the Ongole area which is down near the southern part on Andhra Pradesh. This coming week I will be in Nellore which is part of the BELC but is again near the same area just a little farther south.

Nov 1 – Mallavaram – Pastor Simon

Nov 2 – Vavilatipadu – Pastor Rosaiah

Nov 3 – Nagannapalem – Pastor Korneli

Nov 4 – Jarugumalli – Pastor Madhavarao

Nov 5 – Rachavaripalem – Pastor Johnson

I missed getting the gps coordinates on Nov 3 for Nagannapalem so this congregation isn’t shown on the map.

The last night in Rachavaripalem we had a birthday party along with the service. This congregation has been growing quickly the membership is currently 100+, although many of the weren’t able to come Saturday night because of a wedding. We had about 70 people at the service on Saturday.

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After the epic train ride to the northern part of Andhra Pradesh we stayed in Kakinda four nights visiting three congregations. these congregations are marked on the map below.

November 28  - Jayathinagar – Pastor Daneil

November 29 – Gygolepadu – Pastor Sudhakar

November 30 – Kakinada – Pastor Wycliff

Pastor Wycliff is the father of Jyothi  Benjamin and oversees the churches near Kakinada in the north eastern part of Andhra Pradesh. We visited his church on Sunday and the congregation welcomed me with a shower of flower petals.

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Made it back to India.

I left the US last week on Monday Oct 3^rd I traveled through London and Bahrain, arriving in India at 5am Wednesday October 5^th. This return to India is “quick” because I will be leaving again in under two months, not because the plane ride was fast. The actual travel time to get here was longer than normal since I had two layovers rather than just the normal one. I need to return to the US in December again to get all my visas and prepare for my trip to Africa in January.

My return wasn’t exactly as smooth as one could hope. My AC wasn’t working which made sleeping a bit uncomfortable and the day after my arrival I came down with a fairly bad cold. (more…)

Last night I was in for a pleasant surprise. When we got to D Paul’s house his eldest son took me over to the government boys hostel, where the boys from the villages stay while going to school here in Nagalapuram. There we watched a game of Kabadi. In the picture below the young man in the black shirt and white shorts attempts to tag any of the seven players on the other team, while they try to tackle him. I have a video I will upload once I get home.

After watching the game we returned to D Paul’s house where the children gather every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday evening for bible lessons and treats afterwards. In the first picture you see them listening to the bible lesson. In the second picture they are eating boiled peanuts.

A few weeks ago Rajamani ( see picture ) asked me how he could learn to understand me better. My speaking that is not some weird spiritual journey into my inner psyche. Since I had been contemplating means to get a closer look at the normal daily lives of our Indian brothers, I immediately suggested I could bunk with him for a week. So here I am three weeks later in Nagalapuram, without air conditioning or pizza, eating rice and stepping over sleeping forms to make my way to the bathroom at night.

The first night has come and gone pleasantly enough. I was supposed to arrive Monday afternoon, but something came up and Rajamani had to be gone, so we came late Tuesday instead. Kumar my faithful and ever vigilant driver dropped me at Rajamani’s front door and then he was gone, not to be seen again until late on Saturday evening.

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It’s 95 degrees and 60% humidity here in Chennai so its actually a bit nicer out than it has been. For those of you who are familiar with the seasons of Southern India, May is the hottest month of the year. Mid June the rains are supposed to start and help cool it down some, but that has not yet happened. So I tend to spend as much time as possible hiding in my A/C office.

I’m on my way to Nagalapuram this morning for a week of teaching at the Martin Luther Bible School. Our topic for the day is the Means of Grace. Every time I teach this class my lesson plan seems to get a little longer. It is a challenge to balance thoroughness with time concerns and the educational level of the students. Ina confirmation class where you have all year to prepare the students with all the background information that leads to a good understanding of the means of grace it might be appropriate to cover it in one lesson. When dealing with students who may not even remember the difference between the law and the gospel you need a little more time. Personally it seems that if one were to be thorough in your teaching of the Means of Grace it would be necessary to touch on every major Christian doctrine. If Justification is the inner center of Martin Luther’s rose of theology, the Means of Grace must be the outer center. Although the true heart of the theological differences of the various branches of Christianity lies in their views of justification, the Means of Grace are where those differences become most vividly apparent. If you wish to know if a teacher truly understands the Gospel of Christ, examine their teachings on the Means of Grace. Their words about the gospel may sound good and “Lutheran” but what seems like tiny differences in their understanding of justification will become large gaps in their views of the Means of Grace.

The coming two weeks will find me out on the road driving from one place to another almost every day. This is pretty typical of my work. Weeks of constant appointments ( classes, preaching, etc ) driving from one place to another, followed by periods where I barely leave my study. When I am back home in the states the work is more even and similar to a typical pastor with speaking engagements generally every Sunday and office work during the week. However, here in India everything tends to get pushed together in blocks.

The Department of State warns U.S. citizens to anticipate possible civil unrest around Anantapur in southern Andhra Pradesh following the death on April 24th of the religious leader Sathya Sai Baba. We recommend U.S. citizens avoid traveling to Puttaparthi in Anantapur, as well as Whitefield (near Bangalore) and Kodai Kanal, Tamil Nadu, the sites of two other ashrams, due to the possibility of demonstrations or crowd control issues arising in the emotionally charged atmosphere.

I received the previous email from the US embassy in India, just a few minutes ago.  Dave, Kumar, D. Paul, and I had been talking about this same man Sathya Sai Baba earlier today. It seems Sathya was an indian man who has convinced a large number of Indians that he was a god by virute of the “miracles” he did. These “miracles” included making ash appear in his hands and pulling small statues out of his mouth.

He reminds me of the priests of Egypt who attempted to copy the miracles of the Lord through moses, and though they could do a few simple tricks these conjurers were quickly left in the dust by the Power of the Lord.  Sathya’s tricks are so pathetic they are left in the dust even by many illusionists who make no claim of special power. All men, whether real or fake, whether admited illusionist or charlatan, even the ture prophets of the Lord who did do some miracles, all are left in the dust by the outstanding and undeniable display of power that our Lord showed forth not only on that “first morning of the week” but through out His life.

A very blessed Easter to you all,

Matthew Ude

Question: How do you know men are in charge in India?

Answer: Because when you install a new phone line, you drop it off the roof, let it hang down the side of the building, and drill a hole in the window frame of your living room to get it inside. If you want to try to make it look nice and professional you strap it to water pipes with plastic ties. I’m quite sure that all the pipes, windows, cables, etc, in India would be held together with duct tape if they knew what it was. Kudos to you Indians doing it the way a man should!!

Actually I think it is simply a practical thing. When you build houses with cement you don’t have as many options for sending wires and pipes through the walls.

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Last week was Diwali, one of the most popular of the Hindu festivals. This is the festival of lights. There are some stories associated with Diwali ( also sometimes called Deepavali ). These stories have to do with good princes conquering evil kings, and gods who bring light to a dark world.

Diwali commemorates the return of Lord Rama along with Sita and Lakshman from his fourteen-year-long exile and vanquishing the demon-king Ravana. In joyous celebration of the return of their king, the people of Ayodhya, the Capital of Rama, illuminated the kingdom with earthen diyas (oil lamps) and burst crackers. – From Wikipedia

Since this holiday comes at the end of October or the beginning of November it sets itself up for a nice comparison with the reformation. I mean “light to a dark land” it doesn’t take much imagination to transfer that theme to the Reformation.

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